This arose from a petty controversy in my neighborhood about whether children should be playing on the rock pile after the construction workers went home.

Rock Piles


Ukrainians fear for homeland
Assad walks free.  Tibetans pray
At the gate of the Mandarin school
Preparing to starve, the Sudanese
And as air surpasses 400 ppm of CO2
Kids stand atop the Near West Side rock pile
Squinting to see it all
  
            But their voices, their smiles

Whitman, bored on the shelf
Children, driven cautiously around piles
That once hauled brave quests to their peaks
He would have climbed too, howling
At liberty in the neighborhood, tilting
Down Commonwealth.  Safety--that quality
Forgotten when rushing--falling

            Silent and inconsequential

Accustomed to the new regime
In yards and work and fears
Our necks bent over tablets
Overhead the Sandhill Cranes
Are circling should we look
Question directions, walk to the shelf
Unwrap that book that once spoke

            Nothing of safety

Chinese pragmatist, Hu Shih: Creator



你不能做我的詩。
正如我不能做你的夢

You cannot write my poems
Just as I cannot dream your dreams.
-Hu Shih


Buried in a tomb in Nankang
Reformer, scholar, diplomat
In an era of change, Hu Shih
Whispering to the poet:
Evolve

Let him cultivate and stimulate
Solve problems.  Do not imitate
The ancients. Hu's marriage:
Arranged. Girl, illiterate, feet
Bound

Speak, said Hu, when you have
Something to say. Substance,
Then subtlety, in the way you want
In the language you live, without
Cliché


Defining poetry

Defining Poetry on a Sunday Morning in Bed


Poetry:  Off-ramp for creativity on our subjective turnpikes
                  when routine paves over shards and gems.

Poetry:  Desire.
Poetry:  Meditating on horizons of concept
                  or experience so as to hover above it.
Poetry:  To make manifest.
Poetry:  Death fright.

Poetry:  Bloom.             
Poetry:  In our attics, an art deco time machine:
                  Polishing. Tinkering. Ordering knobs on eBay.
Poetry:  Faces lit around the campfire.
Poetry:  The virgin birth.

Poetry:  Regime.
Poetry:  Denny’s, Tangiers, trains, New Orleans,
                  The Times, Tegucigalpa, et cetera.
Poetry:  Rugby fools without helmets in the mud.
Poetry:  Pickup lines to ourselves.

Poetry:  How much of it--how stunning--has never become
                   in the yawning canyon of man.

About a student who was authentic, affable and will be missed.

At Age 24, You Left Us
For Topher Kazanski


A busted guard rail, skid marks, echoing
Gasps at your last curve in life, leaving
Your Facebook photos hanging off a cliff
In Oregon

Your great grandfather, Aldo Leopold
Looked up too.  Did you observe a slim
Disappearing line, or the fleeting
Dome of earth?

Are your expectations confirmed on
Cars and curves and precipices?
We all plunge     just not yet, if we
Are reading this

It may be this line and its awkward
End.  Maybe around the next bend
Thanks to you, Topher, age 24
We breath in

Breath out wondering when to brace
Tumble, sail or, like a playing card
Swoop in arcs before landing
Upside down

                      In the river Yaquina